So I figure some gratitude is in order.
This won't be overly funny to be honest, so I'll paste a joke in at the end.
Anyway, thanks to my parents. They supported me, didn't whinge too much when I f*cked up the odd exam and generally had faith that I knew what I was at. If ye're reading this, I didn't. Whoops. And I now owe you two enough money to dig AIG. I'll meet you halfway and buy nice Christmas presents, we can discuss the balance then.

Thanks to all the folk I worked with. Especially the other optoms. Sandra, Martha etc. I'm not naming you all, I'm going drinkin' in ten minutes. But thanks for the expertise, the knowledge and the insider info.

Thanks to the college folk. Lecturers, NOC staff and fellow chumps who got 10% off in HMV. It was fun.

Thanks to all the nightclubs that did drink promotions. I'd say more only I can't remember much of that part of my life.

And yeah, thanks Doc. Your constant comments lifted me up when I was down. They also tried throwing me on front of a taxi, you sonofabitch.

So the joke. Lemme go see...

A guy went into a bar and met a nice girl. They have a few drinks and soon wound up at his place, in bed. They're having a great time. She was on top when suddenly she had an epileptic seizure; she was shaking and foaming at the mouth.
Our uninformed male thought this was incredible - best sex he'd ever had. He finished, but she is still shaking and thrashing about with her seizure.
He began to get nervous and took her to the emergency room. A nurse asked what the problem was and he replied, "I think her orgasm's stuck!"

A ho ho ho.
Toodles.

Fuck five years. If Lady Luck smiles on me, I'll be an optician in 3 days. 2 and a half, even. This is terrifying stuff. Ages ago, I wrote about worrying when I'm gonna stop watching cartoons and this is another nail in the coffin right here.
Goodbye Justice League, I gotta work 5 days a week for the rest of MY LIFE.
This means many things. First of all, there goes borrowing money. While I try to be self sufficient (as in make my own money, not grow turnips), I do have to call upon family members and financial institutions the odd time to intervene and save my thumbs. Whoosh. Out the window with that crack, I'll be full time employed. No more half arsed Saturday jobs.
TV licence. I'll probably have to get one now. And stop robbing /VTL. Ha, I jest. I pay for my TV! Ha, I jest again. I'm some funny bastard these days.
Pension. Whatever that is, apparently I should've started one before PLAYSCHOOL. Otherwise I'll be living in a prefab under a bridge when I'm 70. As long as TV's still free and tuna haven't gone extinct I'm cool with that. Anyway, the way medicine is going, I'll probably be still running marathons when I'm 82. Note to self- run marathon in the first place.
Health Insurance. That goes along with pension in the bottom drawer of me press with quitting drinking and getting MBT shoes. Probably a good idea but, eh, fuck it. I'm young. I'm indestructable. I pity the bus that hits me.

Oh, big one here, TAX. I've never really earned much, well, ever. But now, results pending, I'll be earning an actual salary someway soon. Only for Brian fucking Cowen to come along and grab some of it before I can even jam it into me pocket. These are things I never considered before but GOD I'll have an opinion by Halloween. Things will change. I'll probably be Taoiseach by 2014.

So anyway, in case you Hhaven't noticed, this is indeed another manifestation of my old friend PROCRASTINATION. I should be studying. Really, if I fail this exam I'm fucked until Christmas and hoo, will people get some shite pound shop presents if that happens. But yet and all, here I am. And in ten minutes I'll be colour coding the t-shirts in my wardrobe.
Hardcore.

Anyway, so my exam's at 1.00 on Monday, say a prayer, sacrifice a goat, DO SOMETHING. Cheers.

"What's annoying you these days, Noel?"

Since you asked, LOADS! If stuff annoying me was buckets of, eh, peas, I'd look like I was selling buckets of peas. I don't like complaining but it does seem to get me more page views than my other crap so let's rock.

With all the talk of driving licenses (What? I talk about it.), I've always wondered what the story is with people who seem to have trouble with the most basic of methods of transports, walking.
I'm not stupid, I'm not gonna go giving out about folk in wheelchairs or that jazz. I've limits here, and Stephen Hawking is just beyond them. I'm talking about people who just cannot fucking move from A to B on there two feet without disrupting half the city.
You get people who just STOP... in the middle of the street. No reason that I can make out. They stop, occasionally look up at the clouds and then walk off, unaware of the PILE UP of folk behince them. Usually tourists. Whatever about disabled folks, I've no problems in saying FUCK FOREIGNERs. Whoops. Not all of them, naturally, Just the ones who annoy me. So I suppose I could expand the above from FOREIGNERS to just about EVERYBODY. Again, just the everybody who annoys me.

So back to my pedantic pedestrian problems. Prams. Jesus H., some folk (women usually, but it is almost entirely women on them. Women can't push prams, men can't do good burgers on a barbecue) just cannot get their kids around the place without making more damage to Dublin's traffic than the St. Patrick's day parade. They swerve amd spin all over the place, nail my ankles and then tell me to get out of the wway as if they're pushing around the baby JESUS. Eh, listen lady, your baby's ugly and you're still in your pyjamas. Now go home, I've a good song in me head.

I'm just gonna skip right over the veritable ARMADAs of Spanish students hovering around pedestrian crossings these days, with their three quarter length jeans, expensive sunglasses and FLUORESCENT backpacks. They just... annoy me. I've though about throwing live cats into the middle of their groups more than once, let's leave it at that.


Okay, new rant. College Road Trip. So there I was, queueing up in the cinema with a friend, her friend, her friend's friend's friend and yada yada yada's boyfriend. Fuck me, like, it took ten minutes just to introduce everyone. So we were waiting in the queue in Cineworld. I'd seen most of the stuff out so I reckoned I'd let them decide. I hinted at Wall*E but tdidn't push too hard. And, by the time we got up to the top the consensus was College Road Trip. Fuck it, what did I have to lose? At worst, I imagined it to be Road Trip, just with more... college? I dunno, Tom Green and breast jokes. I might chuckle.
BUT NOOO.
This was Martin "Prick" Laurence and Raven "Dopey Cow" Symone. It was the least funny thing I've ever seen. Really, Oireachtas Report has more gags. It's muck. It's filth. Two thirds of the "jokes" are just Martin Laurence pulling his dumb bastard look. The other third are from Donny Osmond. Fuck Donny Osmond, Daniel O'Donnell is funnier than he is.

The only thing I found funny about this film is that Raven Symone, a girl looking to get into LAW SCHOOL has the combined brains and cop on of a pot of MASHED POTATOES.
I'll be honest, I didn't pay into this movie. I have an unlimited card but LORD ALMIGHTY did I want a refund coming out of that, that...
...thing.

"Dear Cineworld, I recently spent two hours of my hard earned time in your establishment..."

Consider it a warning, folks. Later!